As part of the preview release of Office 2013 by Microsoft in July, the company also included a new version of Publisher. This software program, which had its first version in 1991, is supposed to help users with making things such as brochures and other design oriented publications, as opposed to Word which is mostly designed just for more basic word processing tasks.

In a new blog post, Microsoft goes over some of the new features users of the new Publisher can expect. The blog states:

We added popular effects such as softer shadows, glows, and reflection, which you can apply to pictures, shapes, or text, along with new presets in the Styles galleries, offering great looking combinations of effects that can be applied with a single click.

The new Publisher also has a new set of templates for users to quickly get started on their projects and Microsoft plans to add new templates over the course of the product's lifetime.

Adding and using pictures in the new version of Publisher is supposed to be easier as well. Microsoft says that users can quickly access images via their SkyDrive accounts to put in Publisher-based projects. The new version can also export all the pages in a Publisher as high quality images files for quick printing at an online or brick-and-mortar printing service.